Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man

In 2000, an unknown attacker brought down the websites of Amazon, CNN, Dell, E-TRADE, eBay, and Yahoo!, inciting panic from Silicon Valley to the White House. The FBI, police, and independent security experts launched a manhunt as President Clinton convened a cyber security summit to discuss how best to protect America's information infrastructure from future attacks. Then, after hundreds of hours of wiretapping, law enforcement officials executed a late-night raid and came face-to-face with the most wanted man in cyberspace: a fifteen-year-old whose username was “Mafiaboy.” Despite requests from every major media outlet, that young man, Michael Calce, has never spoken publicly about his crimes—until now.

Equal parts true-crime thriller and exposé, Mafiaboy will take you on an electrifying tour of the fast-evolving twenty-first-century world of hacking—from disruptions caused by teens like Calce to organized crime and other efforts with potentially catastrophic results. It also includes a guide to protecting yourself online.

O avtorju (2011)

Michael Calce served eight months in open custody for the 56 charges on which he was convicted. He now writes a computer secruity column to educate people about online threats and to offer advice for staying secure online. He lives in Montreal. Craig Silverman is the author of "Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech." He is the editorial director of OpenFile and a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Vice, and Harvard's Nieman Reports, among others. He lives in Montreal.